"Somewhere on Beta Colony there is an institution. In one room of the institution, there is a man who spends his days and nights screaming at things that only he can see. Things we planted in his mind. They have to keep him in a straitjacket twenty-four hours a day or he'll claw his own eyes out just to make it stop." - Lyta Alexander, Babylon 5

"Lewis?"

The sound of your name makes your head jerk upwards out of reflex. You had been huddled up on one corner of the couch, your face pressed into the little hollow between your legs and your body, shuddering uncontrollably. You've been like that a lot lately.

Doctor Ainsley watches you with an air of calm, good-natured concern. When you look up at her, she smiles slightly, as if to put you at ease.

It doesn't work, because her smile doesn't stop where it should. There's too much of it. And her eyes behind those shiny, shiny lenses just... you drop your head down again.

"Lewis. I need you to talk to me. You said that the pills just made the nightmares indistinguishable from when you're awake?" Her voice is calm and gentle. If it weren't for the high-pitched buzzing from outside the room, and the sound of something rustling across the thick carpeting under the couch you're sitting on, you might be able to relax when you listened to it.

"No," you mutter quietly. "It made when I'm awake the same as the nightmares."

"Do you mean it makes you hallucinate?"

"I don't know," you answer. "Maybe." Something puts its hand on your shoulder. The fingers are longer than they should be. You shut your eyes tight. A moment later, it's gone.

You force your head up again and shudder. Doctor Ainsley isn't there any more. Not really. It looks like her, but it's so obviously just something else wearing her skin. Her shoulders are too slim for it. You can see the bulges.

Her eyes are even worse now. "Lewis?" it asks. "Are you on drugs?"

You look away, desperate to see something, anything else. And you see the window. The window that should open onto a quiet back road in your hometown.

The window that's now showing a busy city in what looks to be Victorian London.

And then you hear the Ainsley-thing stand up. "I think, Lewis," it says, very quietly, drawing out your name slightly, "that I need to get a closer look in what's inside that head of yours."

CODE

This is a game topic for Don't Rest Your Head, which will hopefully be getting its own subforum soon. This is a thread involving TheSomnambulist's character Lewis, and no one else's. Anyone can post in here to make out of character comments, but please place all OOC banter in the [code] tags, to keep it separate from the rest of the thread.

Now, for Grace: this is your character's Awakening. The stress of the waking nightmares and your own sleep deprivation have just combined to finally push you over the edge into the world of the Nightmares. As such, your character feels that something is different, but doesn't know what yet. This scene will hopefully give her a basic introduction to the Mad City and her own new abilities.

[/QUOTE]

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

Try checking the Changeling thread for an idea of the type of post I'm hoping for. This is fine for now, though.

Ainsley is... walking isn't the right word here. Her legs are too off for that. She scuttles towards you, one hand outstretched. That hand, in turn, has one spindly finger pointing out towards you, too thin to be natural. And her face... you try not to look at it.

It might be another of your nightmares. It might be real. It very probably doesn't matter.

"We could try different pills, yes," says Ainsley. "But I don't think it would do any good. I think you have bigger problems than your medicine, Lewis."

It's getting close now. You shift around behind the couch to buy yourself a few more seconds, but you're running out of places to go. It's the door or the window... or letting the Ainsley-thing touch you.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

In case the rules summary PDF wasn't clear, rolls in Don't Rest Your Head work like this:

- I assign a Pain rating to whatever you're trying to do - in this case, escaping from the not-Ainsley that may or may not be a nightmare. This is the number of Pain Dice I will roll. - You build your dice pool for your own side of the roll. Your dice pool consists of any Discipline and Permanent Madness dice you have, plus any Exhaustion you have built up and up to six Madness dice. - You can elect to increase your Exhaustion by one die before making the roll, to show that you are exerting yourself physically. - You can include up to six Madness dice, to indicate you exerting yourself mentally, or just generally pushing yourself to the edge. - We each roll our dice pools. I, since I only have one type of dice, roll a single pool of d6s. You, on the other hand, roll Discipline, Madness, and Exhaustion dice separately. This means that you roll them using separate roll tags, with each labeled with the type of dice it represents. - A one, two, or three is a success. If you have more successes than I do, you succeed at whatever you were trying to do, and you win on ties. The number of successes determines what happens. - The type of dice with the highest number showing is dominant. The dominant dice type determines how it happens. - If Discipline dominates, skill and luck win the day, and the situation stays under control. You can heal up a little. - If Exhaustion dominates, you succeed, but it taxes you physically, and you gain another Exhaustion die. - If Madness dominates, not only does the situation spiral further out of control at my discretion, you have to check off a Fight or Flight response. Whatever the result of the roll-off, you react to it with terror or rage, as appropriate to the response you checked off. - If Pain dominates... I get sadistic.

The Not-Ainsley is Pain 3, which means that you are evenly-matched with it even without adding any Exhaustion or Madness dice. But rolling three dice to beat three dice is risky, and that extra edge might make the difference between getting out of the door and getting caught by your own personal Nightmare...

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

So I roll three discipline dice? And I can add exhaustion and/or madness dice but generally it's preferable to not need to do so? Also considering I'm trying to escape the room does my exhaustion talent apply at all? Sorry I skimmed the help page but not sure if I got things right.

I'm not crazy I just use a different definition of sanity...

The Forum Blunt Instrument. "Because sometimes the only way to get through to someone is with a sledgehammer."

Yes. You have three Discipline dice as a player character. And while you can add Exhaustion or Madness dice, doing so puts you at greater risk of having one of those types dominate. Even though having more Exhaustion and Madness dice makes you more likely to succeed, it also makes you more likely to succeed in a way that also hurts you. It's a trade-off.

You can add one Exhaustion die, which will stick around until you get the opportunity to rest or otherwise remove it. This means that you will essentially have a permanently-larger dice pool, but it also means that Exhaustion is permanently more likely to dominate - and Exhaustion dominating means that you get more Exhaustion dice, so they can rapidly spiral out of control. If you ever have seven or more Exhaustion dice in your pool, you Crash, and fall asleep - which is a very, very bad thing.

You can also add up to six Madness dice, which do not stick around - but, unlike Exhaustion dice, Madness dice are very likely to fuck you over right now. If Madness dominates, not only do you have to check off a Fight or Flight response and act accordingly, the situation will spiral out of control in another way that I get to come up with - and, as this is Don't Rest Your Head, it will be a very sadistic way indeed. In addition, you only have three responses to check off - and if Madness dominates while you don't have any responses left, you Snap. Not only do you go absolutely nuts for a scene, one of your Discipline dice is permanently replaced by a Madness die.

Both Exhaustion and Madness are very powerful tools, but they're also very, very dangerous, and should not be used lightly.

On the subject of your Exhaustion talent... yes, you can use it. There are two ways to do so. A Minor use of your Exhaustion talent can be done as long as you have at least one Exhaustion die in your pool (even if it just got there by you choosing to add one Exhaustion die), and says that you will always score at least as many successes as you have Exhaustion dice; if you score less than that, the number will be adjusted upward. A Major use of your Exhaustion talent requires that you add another Exhaustion die to your pool, and means that you get a number of extra successes equal to the number of Exhaustion dice in your pool.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man

It isn't Ainsley's voice any more. This one sounds like a drill boring straight into Lewis' brain. Even as he slams into the door at high speed and wrestles with the knob, it rasps across his spine like the point of a knife.

His hands are slippery with sweat, and the knob seems to stick slightly. He twists it desperately, seeking escape to somewhere, anywhere - and then the not-Ainsley's hand is on his on the knob, clutching tightly in a grip that burns like ice. Lewis can feel it standing not an inch behind him, but all that's visible is the hand clamping his against the knob. He can see things moving around under the skin.

"You want to leave, Lewis?" it hisses in his ear. "That's okay. You can leave. But you can't run from your fears forever, Lewis." Its grip on his hand tightens. Something in his hand snaps. He knows that some of his bones are breaking, but the pain is nothing compared to the terror.

"Same time next week, Lewis," purrs the not-Ainsley. "Don't worry about making an appointment. I'll come and see you next time."

And then it twists, and the door opens, and Lewis staggers out of the office-

-and onto the crowded streets of the Mad City.

CODE

Lewis' right hand is now broken.

In addition, Pain dominating means that I get a [b]Despair token[/b], which can be used anywhere to make things much, much worse for you players.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? - Death, in Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man